Because
by shizutte
Summary: L X T. as with 99% of stuff I seem to be putting out, occurs 99% in realm of the immaterial ie the mind, and does not normally translate to action on part of characters -- unless this fic chooses to somehow write itself into a new unprecedented corner.
1. Chapter 1

L X T, one-shot -- unless I can find enough time to convert the rest of my very-very-so-brief snatches of a draft into prose.

You know the disclaimers.

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"Why do you do that?"

An irritated glare shearing past the edge of those large spectacles, fiery enough to set any target smouldering.

"No particular reason."

-- There he goes again, those same old pointless and meaningless impulses of real human beings, frustratingly opaque but, damn it, and embarrassingly enticing Lockon can almost read the line of thought brooding over the pristine mind behind those clear ruby eyes, which gave their thoughts away as clear as daylight.

Humans are transparent to Lockon like programmes and systems are to the one who is currently trying to exorcise his presence with visual powers alone. While other crews have failed again and again to comprehend how they have ended up a miserable crumpled heap at the knife-sharp edge of Tieria's searing disapproval, he had immediately shifted back into familiar gears, gliding past the hidden mines while reading Tieria like an open book with ultra-large font.

And it thus is his joy and utmost his alone, to excavate the loose edges and hidden cracks in that shield of almost immortal disdain for humanity, and tap on them for a most exquisite form of entertainment while waiting for missions quite a forgiveable act, given that there are not many choices between tossing haro and drinking with their strategy forecaster who looked under-aged for her forever-scarred love life and over-aged for the gusto she down her alcoholic fix.

"I do not feel cold as you humans do" -- The explanation, on its way to losing patience, to an extra blanket on cold nights, delivered at the inopportune moment when the target in question was between bathrobe and night-gown. Water-droplets, quickly cooling in the inorganic cabin air, dangle and drip off the tip of newly-washed hair so deliciously purple.

"My eyesight is perfect; it does not deteriorate as human vision does." -- The rebuttal, heedlessly sharp without the normal veil of human sociability, shatters another failed advice against the evils of prolonged exposure to glowing screens. The room lapses into silence as before, data crawling without an end, and the inorganic glow throwing a shroud of incandescence round the fluorescence-bleached curves and angles sinfully oblivious to their own mesmerised victim.

But for the large majority of the time, when the rationale of the matter on hand fails to turn up an answer against a brief search of whatever terminal data he bothered to carry off Veda, it is simply a "Why?", packaged with an almost confrontational stare of technical curiosity, the hunger for data without desire for the explanation in itself.

There are crews who have taken to avoid Tieria for that look of his that surface once in a while, a blatant revelation of his true nature that proffers the last shattering blow to the wobbly and tepid social play-pretend that has become customary to maintain around him. Sometimes Lockon wonders if the true reason why Veda has made Tieria look the way he is now is not of any sheer happy coincidence, but deliberate calculation on its part. For if Tieria had not looked the way he is, Lockon suspects that no one would actually even bother to put up that paper-thin jovial pretence around him, of taking him to be the same as any other quite-human member of this revolutionary force.

Lockon is probably the only person ever who has restlessly practised perfecting his craft of pushing the correct buttons, to get that look, part that feline-like irritation and part simple transparent surprise, unknown to its possessor an irresistible invitation for provocation -- chilling, burning, and enough to stop a particular heart in mid-beat.

And enough, to make that thought occur to him, again and again, a broken tape on eternal rewind.

Enough, that he finally yield to his own incessant curiosity to put a toe beyond the line.

"Because I love you."

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do forgive me for the excessive word usage and entangling phrasing...pray blame the incessant heat if you wish to. It's not been raining properly for a while and getting on my nerves.

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10May -- oops.. I forgot to paste a paragraph across _. Many thanks to Cademy Sadence; error fixed.


	2. Chapter 2

"Because I love you."

Tieria Erde played that line, in his mind, again and again.

Again and again and again.

Like a tape-player, better than a tape-player. Tape-players are analogue, Tieria is digital, crystal-clear, well-rendered, noise-filtered.

Tieria played it word by word, syllable by syllable, sound by sound, in the right order, in reverse, slowed, sped-up, taken apart and mixed, and then put back together again.

He played it while gliding along that particularly long stretch of corridor running through the team's craft, he played it while waiting for a particular large pack of data to load, he played it while watching the other crew members dig into their dinner with gusto, he played it under the hot water of the morning showers while musing about the human psychological need of washing.

He played it while staring straight into the eyes of the one who gave them to this world, tracing the jovial turn in the lips that voiced them into life. He played it alone in the distant forgotten crook and cranny of the spacecraft that only he and veda know.

Tieria cannot comprehend, understand, know.

Because -- a conjunction, explaining, linking cause to effect, proposing likeliness of causation, be-cause, be, cause, because. Because.

I -- a pronoun, self, self-consciousness, identity, first-pronoun, gender-neutral in this language but not in some others, subjective form. I, me, my, mine. I.

Love -- a noun, or a verb, it's a verb here, between subject and object. Love, to like, to express affection, to form attachment, to all things physical and conceptual, usage is highly context-dependent and very loose. Love, the ultimate representation of human language usage, love.

Because I love you -- clause, phrase, it is illegal to start a sentence with 'because' in certain branches of the language, and very doable in others, a phrase complete with subject, object, verb.

Tieria understands every bit of it, he could pick out that line, even if it's just a sonogram, a messy but orderly smear of monochrome.

Yet there's this nagging feeling that he doesn't understand it.

It's like groping in the dark, for a syntax that refuses to settle, for a equation that rejects predictability, like scepticism forever deprived of the golden 'cogito ergo sum'. It's the emergence pattern that somehow always manage to bloom on a level beyond his reach.

It frustrates him, like an unsolved glitch in Veda's connection, expanding, pushing, against his patience.

It drives him mad.

.

Lockon stratos return from a midnight foray into the pantry for some snacks, to find an intruder in his room, eyes flashing in the darkness of the unlit room, in a manner human beings are quite not capable of. He composes himself for the good show to come.

"Explain yourself." Tieria bursts out in exasperation.

"Because I love you."

"Why?"

Lockon slips out of the doorway, past the slight figure of his midnight entertainment, and the door slides shut behind him, locking with a sleek click, throwing them both in total darkness.

"No why, because."

* * *

This probably completes the other half of the story for this really short fic.

I probably don't really know half of the technical terms I'm throwing in, to give it the non-human sort of feel of looking into Tieria's mind where all sorts of information races through. Though I do know what a sonogram is -- at least the type used in analysis of animal calls. Otherwise I have no idea about linguistics.


End file.
